When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, its a good core workout. If youre sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More

Many of us remember coming home from our elementary schools with freshly glazed pinchpots, cups, or whatever else our young imaginations could conjure up. Saturday mornings at the Randall Museum can bring that memory back, or create a new one for the youngsters. Ceramics make great gifts — especially on Mothers' and Fathers' Day. Hop on board for the Randall's once-weekly class, and for $6 and two weeks to have your work fired and glazed, you'll have all the materials you need.More

In Praise of Songs That Aren't About Their Singers

She stood alone onstage, armed with only a banjo, and played a blues so hard it hurt. This was Thao Nguyen — sans backing band the Get Down Stay Down on this Sunday night at Public Works — scraping through the title track of her latest album, We the Common, stomping her brown cowboy boots on the stage, her electrified banjo sounding ragged and untamable. For the chorus her voice zoomed up into a soft peak, a refrain so heartworn it didn't even have words. The verse ends, "Oh, how we the common do cry" — and then Thao delivers just a fluttering wail. On the record these chorus vocals are multi-tracked; they sound like a little army of commoners. With her alone it lost the optimism of company: just one sad lilt wafting through the room.

This is a song about a real person — Valerie Bolden, a life-without-parole inmate at Valley State Prison for Women near Fresno — and the conversation she and Nguyen had the first time they met. (Nguyen volunteers with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.) Goddamn if it doesn't exude every bit of the hurt and hopelessness that it must be to know you will live in a cage for the rest of your life and your children will grow up without you. "All they wanted was a villain, a villain, and all they had was me," Thao sings, channeling the long tradition of American prison ballads. And yet she sounds so relevant to right now, in the same way that the old songwriters of that tradition would grapple, almost out of obligation, with the events of their time. This is by design: "I think my songwriting has become less selfish, hopefully," Nguyen has said of her latest album. "I wanted to try to actually be a real live person, rather than just singing songs about them."

You can't help but feel this realness and relevance in Thao's "We the Common," both on the excellent recording and that night at Public Works. It makes me wonder: Why don't more artists aim for this? Why do so many of our serious young songwriters think they should be both the narrator and the subject of their songs? Why don't they go find some story or feeling, something few know — it doesn't have to be the existential plight of a prisoner, the world is a big place — and make music about that? We're all swamped with songs (and books and films) about the neurosis and privilege of this narcissistic creative class to which many of us belong. Meanwhile the world is full of people with deeper, harder, probably more compelling stories that mostly don't get told by people with the skills to make us want to hear them. Artists shouldn't be scared of those, they should chase them and tell them. Done right, songs from Out There, from the opposite of selfishness, can still be fun and catchy — and they have tremendous power almost by default. The rewards are more than worth the effort. Just look at Thao's example.

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Sub Pop recording artists 'clipping.' brought their brand of noise-driven experimental hip hop to the closing night of 2016's San Francisco Electronic Music Fest this past Sunday. The packed Brava Theater hosted an initially seated crowd that ended the night jumping and dancing against the front of the stage. The trio performed a set focused on their recently released Sci-Fi Horror concept album, 'Splendor & Misery', then delved into their dancier and more aggressive back catalogue, and recent single 'Wriggle'.
Opening performances included local experimental electronic duo 'Tujurikkuja' and computer music artist 'Madalyn Merkey.'"